WOW!! This has been an extremely busy week. Oh, and all the computers here are in Spanish, so I have no spell-check and everything I type in English gets a red error line under it, haha.

Ok, Mom-Info first:Packages--do NOT send through UPS, Fed Ex, etc, any private carrier, because there is a huge tax that gets put on it when it gets here. So if you're going to send a package, send it only through the normal U.S. Mail. Even then, when it gets here, it might be taxed, depending on what it is, and I will have to pay that debt when I pick up the package from the Mission Office. Speaking of which, here is the address:

And I don't have the pouch mail address with me, but all that basically is, is a P.O. box in Salt Lake that sends all that mail here. Apparently, it isn't any faster.

I'm glad you got the email from my Mission President! You'll have to forward it to me so that I can see what he said. Get this... in that picture I hadn't been able to shower for two days, since Monday morning, and after the picture, STILL didn't get a shower until Friday morning... It was nuts.

When I left Dallas, it turned out to be something like a 10-1/2 hour flight and I barely slept. But what was cool is that when I woke up on the plane, it was morning and I was looking out the window at the Andes mountains... SO cool. And 30 minutes later, we landed in Buenos Aires. Then, we went through Immigration, which I thought I wasn't going to be able to get through, because the guy at the window called the supervisor over.. haha. I had no idea what they were saying, or if there was a problem. MTC Spanish is completely different from the Spanish (Castillano) spoken here. After that I went and bought some pesos, got through customs, waited about 40 min for a guy named Alberto, and the van driver Roberto, to get us in a van to drive us all the way to the other side of Buenos Aires to another airport, where we met a guy named Javier. Keep in mind that none of us have any idea what's going on, we are just following whatever missionary is getting his hand held... Then we were told that we were getting on a plane to go to Bahia Blanca. Three hours later, it turns out that the flight was cancelled due to ash from a volcano in Chile. So then, we waited about another hour for another van, to take us to another van and other drivers on the OTHER side of Buenos Aires :). By this time, it was about 4:00 p.m. Then we drove 9-1/2 hours....... to Bahia Blanca. We got to the mission home, and then drove another few minutes to a house where we finally went to sleep at 1:30 a.m. Then we got up at up at 6:30 a.m. Awesome. Oh yes, and all this happened, still in the same clothes :)

That is pretty much the travel experience. After spending the day in Bahia, Elder Wallace (new companion) and I tried to catch the bus going to Suarez (our area) but missed it by like 20 seconds. The whole day, we had been contacting people, visiting some people that Elder Wallace had made appointments with, and looking for key things: Area Book, our cell phone, oh yeah, and the KEYS to our apartment. We were going in "blind" to this city. Apparently missionaries hadn't been here for 3 months, so we kinda had to settle in again. It turned out that our apartment keys were in a completely different city (luckily, on the way), and our Area Book was hidden somewhere in the office. We still don't have a cell phone which is a bummer because we have had to go to the church every night to call our district leader.. Yeah it's a lot of walking.. :)

OH and we were also told that we already have to find a new apartment! Haha, my first transfer and all this stuff is going on. But it's been fun so far. I have to go because we are meeting a imobilario (renter basically) in like 10 minutes.

So Monday is P-day now.... And the food is good. But apparently they put mayo on everything... Not good...

I love you, Mom!! Chaio!

[short notes from Mom]1. I will update your blog/website with your new address. Even without having the P.O. Box address for pouch mail, I think the DearElder process is probably easier for pouch mail... it's as easy to send as an email, and free. Free is good.2. Exciting travel adventures, and a shower at the end... what more could you ask for??3. Mayonnaise on everything, for my Condiment-Challenged Child... the Lord works in mysterious ways :)

Yes, I got the second package you sent me, thank you very much. Those pictures are absolutely perfect. I almost have all of the albums filled up. I don't know about you, but I was kind of shocked at some of my pictures from a while ago.... haha! Thanks for the iPod and everything!

OH, I need to tell you something cool that happened this week. Elder Holland came and spoke to us on Tuesday. Apostles don't come very often to the MTC, so it was extremely exciting to have an Apostle here, especially Elder Holland. His talk was practically a Q and A. President Brown, the MTC president, asked some missionaries a few questions that would be given to Elder Holland to address for us here. Before Elder Holland really talked about those questions he talked about Missionaries not disgracing the name and image of the Church. And that we have no right to do stupid things that would tarnish the image of missionaries and the church alike. And you know him, he comes off pretty strong.

Ok, so I just read your emails. I think it's best that we just don't do the airport thing, because it is against the rules, and I don't know what all is going to happen before I get on my flight or how long things are going to take. CTR :)